I've recently had a chance to allow my emotions to run away with me. I almost fell into the victim trap, which I decry most of the time. It's almost never a case of somebody victimizing you. It's almost always you victimizing yourself, and you do that by the way that you think about things. You do that by what you do with your mind.
Recently, I was in Las Vegas, Nevada, at the Toastmasters International Conference. The hotel I was staying in had a sign clearly marked that said, "Shuttle bus to the airport every hour between 7am and 10pm." There was something else after that, but I saw no need to read that because I could simply catch the shuttle at 9:00 to be on time for my plane. The next morning, about 7:00, 7:30, I just reiterated to the woman that the bus was going to leave every hour and that I could be on it at 9:00, when she told me that only if I had scheduled my trip. To some of you that may seem to make sense, but to me, if a bus leaves every hour from 7am to 10pm, I don't need to know anything else, and that's the way I treated it. Right after she told me that, I wanted to complain. I wanted to tell her, what do you mean scheduled? It said the bus leaves from 7am to 10pm every hour on the hour. What's this about scheduling? And sure enough, when I looked at the sign, the sign said, "Please schedule."
Now, they have their own reasons for scheduling, and that might make sense, but that's not what this blog is about. As an extraordinary coach, you must not be reactive, just like I must not be reactive. My initial impression was that I was being victimized because look what could have happened if I didn't mention to her that I wanted to be on that bus. You imagine, being told when you got ready to go to the airport that you can't go because you didn't schedule and simply standing on that ceremony? They would have been perfectly within their right, and no court in America would have decided in my favor had it gone to that place.
Back to thinking like a victim. I was complaining actually to two people I know, when it occurred to me, wait a minute. That's not quite the way to look at this. You know, my word, viewattitudes, says that if you change your view, you can change your attitude? I always decry anybody identifying themselves as a victim, so I stopped for a moment. I thought again and asked myself, is it true that I'm being a victim? Is it true that I'm being taken advantage of? Well, of course it wasn't true, but here's what was true. God had given me an opportunity to be blessed once again.
It seems in this life that I've lived over the last year or two, it seems that whatever I needed whenever I needed, it would show up, no matter what kind of anxieties I had before the time was right. In this case, it was no different. God had blessed me so that I was able to be here at the prescribed time, so that I had the conversation that I needed to have, so that I could make my plane. So none of this victimization crap. None of this, "They're taking advantage of me" crap. The only thing that I should have been thinking is, "Wow. How fortunate of me once again to have God bless me in this way."
The point of this blog is that we all can look at things any way that we want to. If we want to be victimized, we can find a way to be victimized, but if we want to be, shall we say, "victor-ized," we can do that as well. We can do that as well. Caution yourself as you listen to your clients and as you guide your clients that it is their mind that is in charge. I can't stress this often enough that it is your mind that makes your life. In the case of the almost-missed shuttle bus to the airport, it is now ancient history. What has replaced it is another memory, another little tug, indicating that God is still on the throne.
If this blog has blessed you, once again I ask you to pass it on to your families, or friend, or somebody that you care about. I end this blog just like I end all of them, which is, you do yourself a favor and have a good time until the next time. Bye for now.
No comments:
Post a Comment